The contribution of the pulvinar nuclei to vision and visual behavior has been assessed by recording from single neurons in three subnuclei in awake, trained rhesus monkeys. The inferior pulvinar has a predominance of visually responsive cells. When the monkey makes a saccadic eye movement to a stimulus in a cell's receptive field the neuron gives an augmented discharge. Such behavioral modulations of visual responses are most likely related to perceptual processing associated with shifts of gaze. The alpha portion of the lateral pulvinar has a similar predominance of visually responsive cells. Many cells here respond to the motion of stimuli while the animal holds its eye still. These same neurons also respond to comparable motion when the animal makes a saccadic eye movement which moves the same stimulus across the retina. Most characteristics of the inferior pulvinar and the alpha region of the lateral pulvinar reflect their visual cortical afferents rather than a superior colliculus input. There are many visual cells in the beta portion of the lateral pulvinar, but these are quite different from other pulvinar cells and are remarkably similar to those found in area 7 of the parietal cortex. In this part of the pulvinar the receptive fields are large, the response latencies are long, and there is little selectivity for stimulus configuration. The behavioral modulations found in these thalamic cells are spatially selective. They are only present for eye movements into the receptive field. The effect is also eye movement-independent suggesting an attentional function for this region of the thalamus. These studies demonstrate functional segregations within the nuclei of the pulvinar and suggest differential contributions to visual behavior.